Police say gang members may have stabbed middle-schooler

Police are investigating whether an Athens teen who showed up at school Monday with an infected wound was attacked and stabbed two days earlier by members of a local street gang.

The 15-year-old student at Burney-Harris-Lyons Middle School said attackers wearing ski masks beat and stabbed him at about 4:30 p.m. Friday in the north Athens neighborhood of Garnett Ridge, according to police.

The victim said he was walking on Garnett Ridge Drive near Amethyst Drive when a light blue Honda Accord drove by carrying five people who flashed hand signs associated with the 18th Street Mexican street gang.

He returned a hand gesture of his own - a "whatever" response to show he didn't want any trouble, according to police.

That's when one of the masked men got out of the car and punched him in the jaw, the victim said.

He punched back, the victim said, and the four other men got out of the car, surrounded him and stabbed him in the lower side of his stomach, according to police.

The teen did not say why he didn't immediately report the alleged attack, police said.

The stab wound became infected, however, and at about 1 p.m. Monday he told a resource officer at the Tallassee Road school what happened to him.

Athens-Clarke police Sgt. Sean Potter said detectives with the Criminal Investigations Division are looking into the boy's story.

"We're investigating it fully," he said.

Next month, the first person ever to be charged under the state's 1998 anti-gang law is scheduled to go on trial in Clarke County Superior Court.

Miguel Hidalgo-Lopez, an alleged member of Los Primos - a Mexican street gang purported to be based in Garnett Ridge - is accused of participating in a January 2004 drive-by shooting that targeted rival 18th Street gang members in the Garden Apartments complex off North Avenue.